Welcome
to my web site. Here you will find information on my books
-- both paperback and e-books. Please visit my blog: Kathleen Valentine
Blog for more information on my books and for
book reviews, interviews with independent authors, knitting
patterns, recipes, and blog posts on a variety of subjects.Thanks
for visiting!

A novel told in eleven stories set in Marienstadt, a fictional Pennsylvania Dutch community in the Allegheny Highlands. Meet Oliver, the powerful but reclusive woodsman; Father Nick Bauer; Gretchen, owner of The Calico Cuckoo Quilt Shop; the devastatingly handsome Chief of Police, Henry Werner; Dean Ginther, the patrolman who loves to ticket nuns; Lola Eckert, a beautiful but bashful strudel artist; Peeper Baumgratz, who is ready for the Apocalypse; Sister Ursula, the nun with a snowplow; Mulligan Wolfe, the pig farmer who can dance, and many more.

Growing
up in Salem, Massachusetts, art curator Tempest Hobbs was surrounded
by metaphysical practitioners but considers her own empathic
powers a curse. The thoughts and feelings that assault her
grow so powerful that she is confined to a psychiatric hospital.
Upon her return home, badly shaken and weak, she discovers
a letter from Hathor, the mysterious mansion of the Ravenscroft
family.

Located
on the island of Hephzibah Regrets just off the coast, Hathor
has fascinated the locals for over a century. Said to be filled
with fabulous art and “fairy retreats” where lavish
parties are held, Hathor has been passed on through successive
generations of Ravenscrofts. But sixteen years ago, during
one of those parties, the distinguished dancer and Ravenscroft
heir, Raven Silver was shot and killed. Syd Jupiter, a powerful
NFL fullback and husband of Raven's sister and dance partner
Rachel, was convicted of the depraved heart murder of his brother-in-law
and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.

The
letter is from Syd Jupiter who is now paroled and living at
Hathor. Wyatt Ravenscroft, Rachel and Raven's grandfather,
is dead and has left his entire estate to Anjelica, Syd and
Rachel's fifteen-year-old daughter. In the letter Syd offers
Tempest the opportunity to live at Hathor for the summer while
evaluating and cataloging the vast art collection. It is also
a welcome opportunity for her to be away from the constant
pressures of her life in society.

Tempest
is dazzled by the art collection she discovers but she is
soon aware that there are secrets and lies all around her.
Hathor's housekeeper, Audrey, hates Syd and was once, Tempest
discovers, Raven's lover. Miles Wainwright, a local fisherman
and the only witness to the murder, is hiding something,
and Anjelica lives in fear that Syd will be sent back to
prison. And then there is Syd's mother, Marie-Isobel, the
owner of a Santeria shop in New Orleans' French Quarter,
who joins them for the summer with her candles and “cleansing” rituals.

In
the fishing village on Hephzibah Regrets the locals gather
every night in the Riptide where men drink and talk fishing,
women spin and knit, and everyone relishes the rumors and tales
about Hathor. They tell stories of Will Silver, the father
Raven and Rachel never knew, and of wild Rosalind, their beautiful
mother who died in an insane asylum. As the heat of summer
intensifies Tempest learns more about the residents of Hathor
with all their secrets, deceptions, love affairs, madness,
and mysterious deaths. And about Syd Jupiter who is as enigmatic
as he is alluring. Read
more....

Mardi Gras Was Over - He arrived on
a Harley one dark night and swept her off to Mardi Gras --
then off her feet. Now a lot of years have passed.

The Mermaid Shawl - She moved to an island
in the Great Lakes to heal from a loss. There she found two great
loves -- the lace shawls she designed to sell and the beautiful
stranger she pulled from the sea.

Sailor's Valentine - Lobsterman Tristan Hancock was a
loner with a sordid past, shop-owner Minerva Light was a newcomer with a mind
of her own. Nobody in Port St. Magnus was ready for the two of them together.

Novelette
(23k words) – YA / General Adult / Romance – When
Father Nicholas Bauer becomes the pastor of St. Walburga's in
a rural Pennsylvania Dutch community he make it his mission to
revive some of the Old World Traditions including Belsnickel.
According to the local legend, Belsnickel was an old man who
lived in the woods and visited children on the evening of December
6th to see if they've been bad or good. He recruits his childhood
friend Gretchen Fritz who owns a quilting shop called the Calico
Cuckoo. Both of them grew up with Oliver Eberstark and Father
Nick is determined to get Oliver to play Belsnickel for the local
children. When they were young Oliver was a popular athlete and
local heart-throb but now he is a recluse he lives alone at his
grandfather's sawmill deep in Opelt's Wood. As the plans for
Belsnickel and Christmas progress Father Nick hopes to understand
what happened to Oliver and why he is now a hermit and Gretchen
rediscovers why half the girls in town had crushes on him. $.99

Kiana
Davenport, author
of Shark Dialogues, Song of the Exile, and House of
Many Gods posted the following to Amazon about The Old Mermaid's
Tale:

If we are fortunate, sometimes a novel interrupts our lives with
its grandeur, superlative writing, its memorable, heroic
characters. THE OLD MERMAID'S TALE is such a book. Instantly
intriguing, wildly imaginative and informative, it swept
me into the Great Lakes region of the United States, bodies
of water I had always thought of as mysterious, even mythical.
With the Great Lakes as background, Kathleen Valentine
has created a tale of Everywoman who has ever been drawn
to the unknown, even the forbidden, in search of her destiny.

At the end of THE OLD MERMAID'S TALE I bowed my head in wonder
at what Kathleen Valentine has accomplished, a novel that is a
treasure-house of the Great Lakes maritime history and lore. But
more importantly, a magnificent story of obsession and redemption,
of finding one's destiny, then finding one's way home. Here is
an old-fashioned story that transports us and educates us as epic
novels do, a story that reminds us of the power of unconditional
love, and of the miracle and brevity of our human existence.

I want to reiterate what another reviewer has said: 'THE OLD MERMAID'S
TALE raises the bar for those publishing independently. It casts
adrift the myth that indie-published novels are inferior to novels
published traditionally.' Amen. This is a great novel. Like great
novels, it engaged all my emotions, and I wept at the end. I feel
privileged to have read it. Thank you, Kathleen Valentine. (Read
the complete review.)

In
the latter part of the 19th century the Monastery of St.
Gabriel the Archangel was built on a cliff overlooking the
ocean on a peninsula in Maine. From its earliest days there
were rumors of strange activity there --- tunnels through
the cliff were reported to give access for smugglers, a miracle-working
nun was said to live there, and a group of drunken lumberjacks
who stormed the convent to kidnap wives claimed to have been
vanquished by a giant angel with a flaming sword. One hundred
years later, when the last of the old cloistered nuns was
removed to a retirement home, the decision was made to close
and sell the convent. That's when it was discovered that
he convent's treasure, a marble statue of the Archangel Gabriel
by Italian sculptor Giovanni Dupré, was missing. More......

I just purchased and downloaded your
e-book. How fabulous it is!!! The download was easy and
zippy fast. -
kknitterkc on Ravelry

Note: As soon as you complete your purchase
your screen should be redirected to the download site. If you
wait more than 2 minutes and do not see the PDF file (7.5MB)
please email me and
I will send you the link for downloading. Please
be advised that some email programs have been filtering out
the redirection, AOL especially may do this. If you are not
redirected, email and I will send the link.

Inspired
by the popularity of The Mermaid Shawl first featured on Parlez-Moi
Blog, this book provides instruction for the Mermaid Shawl and two variations,
the Gypsy Shawl, and the Shawl of Falling Leaves and Shooting Stars. In addition
there are chapters on creating Emily's Shawl, four stoles and wraps and how
to convert a rectangular shawl into a cocoon.

Photographs,
charts, and illustrations. Available as an eBook or as a paperback.

The
new expanded and redesigned edition of Fry Bacon. Add Onions: The Valentine
Family & Friends Cookbook: five generations of good eating

In
this combination memoir and family cookbook blogger and novelist
Kathleen Valentine combines 30 posts from her blog with nearly
400 recipes collected from family and friends. Growing up in
a "mostly Pennsylvania Dutch" family she collected and recorded
recipes from grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, cousins,
friends, etc. which were combined in the first Valentine Family & Friends
Cookbook published in 1981. This was expanded in the 1992 edition
and now, in this third edition, nearly 400 recipes combine with
essays recording memories of growing up in rural Pennsylvania
and photographs from six generations.

Essays topics include making sauerkraut and soltz (sultz) (a German
pickled meat loaf), toasting marshmallows and catching fireflies, the old-country
Christmas traditions of making stollen and visits from Belsnickle, old world
ghost stories, their grandmother's quilts, and more.

Traditional family recipes include schmarn, panhaas, moultasha, a variety
of sausage recipes, hassenpfeffer, and liver dumplings, a wide variety
of pickles and relishes, as well as keuchels (a type of fried dough),
apple dumplings, and rhubarb crisps and pies. Contemporary recipes from the younger
generations of the Valentine family expand the collection with everything from
dips and cocktails to chowders, cakes and cookies. Among the more popular recipes
first featured on Valentine's blog are:

three maple syrup pies

apricot-apple crisp with maple cream

caramel peachy-pear pandowdy

honey & white
peach pie

Pennsylvania Dutch hot and sour soup

Though
this collection is a memoir in food
of the Valentine family it could be the story of any first, second
and third generation immigrant family.

Eight
stories that celebrate the wonder of finding love... These
stories sweep the reader into sensuous worlds where ordinary
people discover, or rediscover, love. Foolish love, forbidden
love, married love – even murderous love, each story
is a seductive jewel populated with characters that seem like
someone we could know – or someone we could be. Each
of the stories in this collection is an exquisitely rendered
portrait of people from a broad range of ages each proving
that passion and love are eternal, regardless of life's far-ranging
challenges.